Stormrage novel cover art revealed - Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:00:00 ESTThis isn't the biggest news in the world, but for those of you that really dig World of Warcraft's extended universe, it might be pretty exciting. Medievaldragon over at BlizzPlanet has an incredibly hi-res picture of the artwork that will grace the cover of the upcoming novel Stormrage, courtesy of Pocket Books.

I can't help but notice Malfurion's rather feral appearance there. Despite how much Blizzard loves the whole "falling from grace" thing for their characters, I somewhat doubt they will take that road with Malfurion, even with everything going on in the Emerald Dream.* Is he stalking some prey? Is he running from whatever gave him those scars? Is he pissed that Tyrande went Shadow and made him respec Resto, hence the foliage? Who knows, but I'm curious to find out, even if my least favorite Warcraft novelist is tackling this one. Maybe we'll get an excerpt to read in our swag bags at BlizzCon? We can hope, right?

*If they do, I assume it will be temporary. Chris Metzen seems awfully attached to Malfurion when he talks about him, so I don't expect they'll kill the poor guy off.

No, what you see above is not the logo of the (probably) upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm. It's the graphic being used by a phishing site that's been making the rounds lately and we've received a number of emails about. To make sure everybody is completely clear, if you see the logo above, the website you're visiting is absolutely not legit. There are no Cataclysm Alpha invites going out to the public, and certainly not Beta invites. When Blizzard kicks off a beta, we'll be sure to tell you. And even better, Blizzard will be sure to tell you. Until that happens, please be careful about what you click on. The pre-expansion period is prime time for phishing attempts.

Naturally, even if that's not the graphic you see, you should be wary of Cataclysm-related phishing sites. There are quite a few right now, and they will even grow more numerous after BlizzCon. Be mindful of the sites you're linked, be careful where you enter your WoW account information, as well as your personal information. I know we've said it many times before, but we really can't say it enough. Don't do anything silly, and if you want to be absolutely sure that you don't do anything silly, grab yourself an authenticator if you can. If you can't get the physical authenticator, there's always one of the mobile authenticators.

As far as I know, this is the first sign of a schedule we've seen for the convention. Blizzard usually does announce a schedule of panels and events a few days ahead of time (and of course, when you get your packet there at the door, there's a program with the full schedule inside), but they usually cut it pretty close. As of this writing, eight days until showtime, there is no official schedule yet posted on the site.

But this will give you at least one thing to plan on seeing (and we can tell you for sure that Friday morning will be the official keynote, with Saturday evening being the Ozzy show, if the way they've done it in the past is any indication). And as long as you're making a schedule up, don't forget to stop by our meetup on Thursday night -- not only will we have WoW.com staffers live in attendance, but there will be door prizes galore. More info on that soon.

The lost art of crowd control - Wed, 12 Aug 2009 17:00:00 ESTThe emblems changes are driving traffic back to the Heroics, and I love it -- 5-mans are my favorite thing to do in the game, and there's nothing more fun to me than sitting down with a group and trouncing a Heroic, reeling in all of the gold and loot we can carry. But there's something missing, still, even in these glory days of achievements and Stone Keeper's Shards and Emblems of Conquest. Yes, it's crowd control. Groups are still gung-ho on AoEing everything in their way, and Blizzard hasn't shown any indication, even in the design of the new instances, that crowd control is anything they want to keep around. I can't remember the last time I trapped something in a group on my Hunter, and I'm sure that the last time I did, some Death Knight broke it right open, Death Grip-ped it back into the group, and then AoE'd it down to nothing.

Bornakk actually replies in the thread that we're just being nostalgic for nostalgia's sake, and that even when CC was required, people whined that they needed to have certain classes in their groups. But what class doesn't have CC these days? Even Shamans got their CC, just as it wasn't actually needed any more. Crowd control added some semi-serious strategy even to trash fights in instances, and while we originally heard that it would come back at some point, Blizzard certainly seems to be done with it.

But we can be patient. The new instances in 3.2 are light to completely empty on trash, so maybe they're waiting for Icecrown to really put our CC skills and coordination to the test. I play a Hunter at endgame currently, so I might be biased, but I do love 5-mans, and I do miss the extra coordination and teamwork that a big CC-required pull provided. Hopefully they can find a way to mix that back in without requiring certain specs or classes to be along for the ride.

After reading the questions and answers, I breathed a sigh of relief. No hints or indications of any nerfs coming our way, and Blizzard actually acknowledged several longstanding flaws with the class. Not only that, but they actually provided possible solutions; I'll be taking them with a grain of salt. New Rogues are excited about our class' complexity and diversity, while experienced Rogues are proud that we are now respected as damage dealers instead of being seen as second-class DPS.

The hilarious screenshot above comes from Blitzkrieg of Twisting Nether -- I think it's probably the winner of guild screenshots we've seen so far. It's too bad they didn't get the actual Flame Leviathan model in there, but the guildies' names above their heads are perfect. Very well done.

Lots more downings (we're still cleaning up the ones before patch 3.2, but I expect after today, we'll be seeing some serious Crusaders' Coliseum progression), and of course the usual drama and recruiting news in this week's GW as well. Click the link below to read on, and enjoy.

New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft.Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic, and be sure to visit the WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.

It's clean-up time around here. Now that the WoW Rookie Guide is up and running to shuttle you to precisely the information you've been wondering about, we're poking through our older pieces to bring them up to date. (If there are any WoW Rookies whose datedness you find especially galling, shoot me a link at lisa [at] wow [dot] com and I'll prioritize it for updating.) Sometimes during the updating process, I uncover little gems, like this excerpt from Elizabeth Harper's 2007 piece Money-making 101. Be sure to visit the entire article, by the way; it's an outstanding resource to make sure you arrive at your character's more costly milestones with gold in your pockets.

In the meantime, let's talk about what's worth selling and what's not. First of all: keep everything. Make buying or making big bags a priority; after all, you can't make money if you can't bring home loot to sell. If your bags get full, sure, go ahead and destroy grey items (items with their names listed in grey letters). (To destroy an item, left-click it, drag it to an open spot on your screen, and left-click again to drop it; reply "Yes" to the dialog box that pops up.)

According to Baron Soosdon, the creator of Million Miles From Home, this movie has been sitting on his hard drive since Spring last year. It had been intended to be sure for Olibith'sNever Stay Tunedseries. However, as is often the case with things like this, the good Baron lost interest in the piece. He wandered off to more engaging pastures. He's finally decided to release the piece as is, even though it doesn't meet all of his current standards for Soosdon machinima.

I think the sad story of Million Miles From Home and its creation is kind of a shame, because this snippet has captured my imagination like few other videos. I adore the retro sci-fi feel of a pink-haired Gnome and friend zooming through space on a pair of rocket mounts. It tugs on my heart-strings and sense of child-like wonder, and I find myself rooting for the two characters with a feeling of glee and expectation. I don't know how it would end if Baron had decided to finish his work on the video, but I can't help but speculate.

The Baron does say his protagonists will likely come back around in the future, and I hope they maintain the same sense of excitement and exploration. For all that Million Miles From Home may be unfinished, it totally won my heart.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

It's Wednesday, hump day. And that means it's time for some Black Eye Peas. NSFW, and all those young whipper-snappers love it. For you older folks, here's something you might enjoy. Ladies and gentleman, Mr. Conway Twitty.

Andrew R asked...

"Why do people always talk about how the alliance is full of little kids while the horde is where the "mature" players are and vice-versa? To add to that why do those same people talk about how bad the opposite faction is and they will never play that faction?"

They should've sent a poet. (But instead they sent Silant <Exploding Kitty Brigade> - US Dalvengyr).

So beautiful.

So beautiful...

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads with dead gnomes any race at all, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Ready Check is a twice-a-week column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. T

Welcome back to Ready Check. We took some time last week to take a look at the changes that patch 3.2 brought to raiding in Azeroth, but now we're back to burning through Ulduar. Today, we'll take a look at Mimiron, and then start working on the final portions of the instance with General Vezax.

Phasing seems to be Blizzard's new favorite toy. It's being used be more and more as we progress through Wrath. From the Wrathgate to those annoying out of body/spirit quests in Zul'Drak, phasing is changing how we see Azeroth itself. But it strikes me there's once area where phasing should sometimes be used and isn't: bosses. Specifically I mean the big guys ... Kil'Jaeden, Illidan, Loken, Yoggy, Algalon and, of course, Arthas himself.

The logic here is simple, these are bosses key to game lore and killing them not only takes an enormous amount of effort (or in the case of Kil'Jaeden, banishing him back to where ever he came from) but it also has an effect on the world itself. Think of the impacts the events of the Sunwell had - phasing was never implemented there, and definitely should have been once Wrath was released.

Now I know you will be thinking: "Why should we only kill a boss once?" I'm not suggesting that once you kill the Lich King, for example, you are locked out of killing him again. Rather that his death triggers a change in Azeroth - which is where the phasing comes in. Icecrown Citadel could collapse or be recycled by other NPCs, such as the Ebon Blade. Once this happens, you could then walk in, click on an NPC and 'relive' the fight in the form of a new raid. The same thing could be done with the Sunwell, for example, and it could open up a new quest chain and further the game's lore in new and fantastic ways.

We've already seen how phasing can change Northrend, just look at how it's used post-Wrathgate. How do you think it could be used (particularly considering that the new expansion is called Cataclysm) to change how we play, the bosses we kill, and how we raid?

Responses to the implementation of Patch 3.2 have been pretty mixed. I've been trying to see as much of it as I can. I loved Children's Week, for example, but over the weekend, I ventured into Trial of the Champion, the new 5-man content in the Crusaders' Coliseum. My curiosity had been piqued by talk of Hogger as a raid boss and whispers of the power to fight Illidan and Lucifron. Now, having never ventured into either Molton Core or Black Temple, I was quite keen to experience the encounter for myself. So I grouped with my guildies (who all seem quite addicted to the quick runs, easy fight and shiny loot) and headed into the unknown.

I was already aware that Trial of the Champion sees you fighting a bunch of champions on horseback, then getting either Eadric the Pure of High Confessor Paletress. We, luckily, got the latter. I like Paletress. She's an intriguing character as well as an epitome of goodness who's not afraid to fight for her beliefs. She also has the coolest attack in the Trial: she summons the memory of a past encounter. This was the bit I was waiting for and when Onyxia appeared, I was momentarily stunned.

The making of the World of Warcraft - Tue, 11 Aug 2009 19:00:00 ESTEurogamer has a nice long look at the early days of World of Warcraft, way before Northrend and Outland and even Molten Core, back when the question wasn't just how big the game would get, but whether Blizzard, a company known for their polish rather than their size, could pull off an entry in this new MMO genre. They've interviewed some of Blizzard's luminaries, and the piece offers a really good look at what it was like at Blizzard even before WoW's release, when they were hashing out some of the ideas and mechanics that have now set the bar with World of Warcraft: the stylistic Warcraft look, and questing as storytelling (originally, they thought they'd only do quests through the starting levels, and then have the game move to a grinding, monster-killing stage towards the end, but players said the game was boring without quests).

There are all kinds of great little tidbits in here: originally, Warcraft III was planned with the over-the-shoulder look that WoW now has, and that's one of the reasons they wanted to create a more straightforward RPG game. Tom Chilton showed up on the team about a year before WoW's release, and to his surprise, the game was almost completely unfinished -- the level cap was only 15, the talent system wasn't implemented, the AH or mail systems weren't in, PvP wasn't in at all (of course, even at release it was pretty barebones), and endgame raiding was nonexistent. Most of the things we think of as intrinsic to the World of Warcraft -- even things like the Horde and Alliance not speaking to each other -- were debated and almost not in at all as they moved towards release.

Death to spell power plate - Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:00:00 ESTIn a recent set of posts on the subject of Prot Paladins wearing holy gear in PvP, Ghostcrawler mentioned that Prot Paladins are not intended to be able to out heal Holy Paladins in the same gear and that fixes are intended that will remove their ability to do this. I'd like to offer a suggestion: destroy all spell power plate. Destroy it! Destroy, destroy, destroy! Exterminate it! Extirpate it from the surface of Azeroth! Perhaps in a Cataclysm of some kind. (Except Judgement. That can stay.)

My reasoning isn't to nerf Holy Paladins as healers. I love all healers equally. Rather, my idea here is to incorporate a class design that's been picking up steam since the end of Burning Crusade. Back before patch 3.0 dropped, two Paladin specs wore spell plate, Holy and Protection. Since that was two specs out of a possible six plate wearing talent specializations (2/6 = 1/3 = roughly 33 percent, I'm not doing a repeating) that meant that there was a fairly sizable minority that wanted the stuff.

Flash forward to Wrath of the Lich King. There are now three plate wearing classes. Two of them (six total talent specs) have absolutely no use for spell plate. The one class that does use spell plate? Well, the Protection tree was revamped, so tanking Paladins don't wear it. Retribution has been giving spell plate the stink eye forever. So we now have 1 out of 9 possible specs wearing the stuff, and yet it drops everywhere. There's no reason spell plate needs to exist, much less be a protected species by Blizzard when they went out of their way to do away with tanking leather, for example.

Upper Deck finalizes Gen Con plans - Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:00:00 ESTAnybody else going to Gen Con this coming weekend? I'll be there on Saturday (and we might even be having a mini-meetup on Saturday night -- Twitter is probably the best place to listen for that), and I'll be sure to take pictures and/or movies of anything WoW that I see on display. Upper Deck has finalized their plans for the event, and it appears they'll be out in force. In addition to what's been announced previously, there'll be a North American Continental Championship for the WoW TCG, with the winner walking away with $10,000 in prizes, including a brand new MacBook Pro, $1000 in Amazon gift cards, and a 30" monitor. But if, like me, you're far from a pro player, you'll still be able to get in on the fun: they'll be demoing the game all weekend, and giving away special promo cards with every demo. WoW Minis will also be there, and they'll be selling a special limited edition Fleet Master Seahorn figure for $9.99, which introduces the questing mechanic to the minis game (we'll expect to see those at BlizzCon as well, I'm sure).

Plus, who knows what else we'll see there -- in the past, we've seen some great displays from Blizzard partners, and even a real-life server protest a few years back. Gen Con is one of the biggest gatherings of gamers in the country, and wherever there are gamers, odds are we'll find World of Warcraft. It'll be my first time seeing the convention this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it.

A few things about this Warcraft-flavored PC casemod, seen over on this Chinese website. First: it's awesome. Warcraft art is faithfully recreated, and as you can see, there's a nice Horde montage on one side, Alliance on the other, and the Dark Portal sitting right there in front. Second: it's probably pretty old -- most of that art is from the game's original release four years ago.

So it's probably not exactly the latest and greatest in Warcraft PC designs (though it might be a little later than the ghost train pirate art). But still, it looks great. And I definitely wouldn't mind wandering around Azeroth on that rather than my current gigantic black tower of a PC.

MMOsite.com has nabbed some pictures of the return to the Chinese World of Warcraft. As you know if you've been paying attention, the game has been offline over there for a few months now, but the game just recently got approved to go back online, and so they're in the middle of a "partial relaunch" (which I believe is taking the form of a closed beta) and the servers are crowding up again. As you can see, there's a stampede (much like ours) going on in Thunder Bluff -- looks like players are happy to be online again.

They also have some comparison images of the censorship found over there. Anything with skulls or bones on it is out, and the offending images have been replaced with piles of dirt and bags and debris. Blood appears as black oil rather than red liquid, and even player corpses are out. As you can see, everywhere players die, there are instead little graves and tombstones around. Very interesting. No idea if this actually "helps" in China (or what the point of the censorship is -- seems as though it's a cultural thing, more like it's a respect for death and dead bodies rather than worrying about whether people will be disturbed by the mention of violence), but of course the government over there has final say on what goes into the game, and apparently this is what they approved. Hopefully Chinese players will be headed back to Northrend before long.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

The video embedded in today's edition of The Queue isn't a silly music video this time around, I'm afraid. No funny business today. Today is for game faces. Today is for serious business. Today is for italic letters.

Sashay asked...

"I have found a glitch that has caused many people to have their hearts broken.

This glitch is the "underground" mining technique that people use so they will not be attacked by enemies. Does this happen because they found a "Under Stormwind" glitch somewhere in Northrend? Maybe they put their toon in the tourney castle before it was built and now they are under everything?"

Bornakk has just announced that the end of Season 6 will come as early as Tuesday August 25th. You'll want to be sure that if you're eligible for arena rewards that you don't transfer your character or generally screw with your arena team. Just relax and let the rewards happen.

After Season 6 ends, there will be one week of downtime where no rated matches can happen.

Season 7 will begin after this week of downtime, at which time all team and personal ratings will be wiped, along with your arena points. According to the announcement matchmaking ratings will remain (as well as honor points). None of this should come as too much of a surprise, as we've known about it all for a while.

This roughly places the start date for Season 7 at Tuesday September 1st. However these things can change, so just pay attention to the news and watch out for the exact date.

After the good Baron Soosdon worked with Olibith on Never Stay Tuned 4, he continued to chase an interesting idea. Warriors Dance is the result of that idea. According to the Baron's description of Warriors Dance, the dance club Shortchange was created after the liberation of the gnomish people from the traitorous Alliance. However, things get a little different by the end of opening night.

Baron Soosdon has created another entertaining, fun location, though this one is wildly different from the paradise he put together for Happy Up Here. I think if the Shortchange were an actual, functioning dance space is Azeroth, you could probably find dozens of Alliance jostling to get in.

I continue to be amazed at how well Soosdon pieces his musical choice together with the video he puts on screen. The rhythm, words, and general vibe of the music matches the thriving, vibrant graphics. Ultimately, this video was awesome, and is going to be one I replay frequently.

In case the embedded video doesn't work out for you, you can check out a few different streams on the Baron's blog.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.

Happy Tuesday to our European readers! We're nearly halfway through August, BlizzCon is just 10 days away and we already know what races we'll be playing in the next expansion. The sun is shining and the internet is thrumming with promise of something Cataclysmic approaching. It can't get any better than that! I'm already thinking of names for my alts. Any suggestions?

(Note to self: hyperactivity in posts is not a good thing. You might want to start drinking coffee to mask the new-expansion-news-high.)

But back to reality for a minute. As usual, the middle of the week is once more upon us. Fortunately things are starting to calm down. Blizzard have just announced scheduled maintenance for tomorrow with all European realms will be offline from 3:00am until 11:00am (CEST). On top of this, a selection of 'lucky' realms will be undergoing an extended maintenance from 1:00am until 11:00am (CEST):

That said, it's not too bad as extended down time goes. But as always there's plenty to do in the meantime, especially as we've told you which faction will be getting which race in Cataclysm. Daniel W. has a great post summing everything up from news to hints about Patch 3.3.

The DirecTV listing has since been changed to remove any reference to Ozzy, however it appears they jumped the gun on the announcement initially.

The press announcement of the closing concert, which was just released this morning, doesn't give many details of anything special that will happen. Other than "Ozzy will unleash a thunderous spectacle of rock to put the Lich King in his place and cement his own title as the one true Prince of Darkness." Morhaime goes on to say that "Many of us at Blizzard are lifelong fans of Ozzy's music, and we're thrilled that he'll be performing for all of our BlizzCon attendees..."

So there you have it. Rumor confirmed! I wonder what else might be announced... WoW.com will let you know!

Some things should be taken literally. Some things should not. Arinod of the <Armored Bear Cavalry> on Kargath US seems to have discovered one of those things that should not. Avinrod, the dashing fellow in the foreground, woke up one day to find the slightly-less-dashing fellow in the background following him around. No matter how many people tell the poor guy that's not what Shadow Priest means... well. Shadows can't hear, apparently. Avin, my friend, it might be time to look into a restraining order.

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads with dead gnomes any race at all, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

Final Fantasy XIV's first jobs and race names revealedNew information is dropping rapidly on this game. Now, Final Fantasy XIV's race names and first classes have been revealed. Hmm, maybe those rumors of an earlier than expected beta carried more weight to them than we thought.

Former Warhammer Online GM gives perspective on game's declineAt Massively we must often report on declining subscription numbers and subsequent layoffs in the MMO industry, just as we do when the games we love are healthy and growing. When you look beyond the numbers though, such industry statistics are ultimately about people whose lives have been negatively impacted. They face uncertainty in their career and likely have tough times ahead.

The Daze of Darkfall epilogue: The Siege of AndrukSo I thought I was done with my whole "month long investigation of Darkfall." Best way to end out the series was to include some PvP being lead by Wardragon Drow (*gasp*, a last name, and I'll get to that in a second) and then close it off there. Well, sadly, Darkfall had one more surprise left for me. Or, should I say, the Blackrock Clan had one more surprise for me. A siege.

Choose my Adventure: Lord of the Rings Online With our Guild Wars adventures behind us, it's now time to branch out into our next game for the Choose my Adventure series. According to your votes accumulated this week, Lord of the Rings Online will be my next game to explore, with a little help from you, the readers. You also voted to keep the format the same, so I'm happy to hear that it's been working well so far.

Breakfast Topic: Loving the class you hate - Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:00:00 ESTI wasn't terribly thrilled with Death Knights when I first saw them. I didn't like the idea of yet another plate class (since I play a lot of warriors), and their whole "recently freed from the thrall of the Lich King" deal didn't do all that much for me. They didn't seem that different from Paladins, to be frank (which is because they're not: thematically, they're the old D&D Anti-Paladin/Blackguard idea) and although I dabbled with them from time to time, I didn't think I'd go the distance.

The first crack in that sense of disdain for the class was the starting zone experience. Anyone who's done it knows it's one heck of a well designed start to finish piece of gameplay. It was so well done, in fact, that I actually rerolled several DK's in an attempt to find the one race I really liked, secure in the knowledge that not only would I start at level 55 and be Outland ready by the end, but I'd enjoy the trip. After that, I blew through Outland on a Tauren, Gnome, Draenei and Dwarf before finally settling on my Night Elf here. Heirloom shoulders made the already painless starting zone even more rapid and Outland fell away like a solid fuel booster rocket lifting me to Northrend before I'd even finished Nagrand.

Now here I am at level 80, and for once I actually have a third alt at max level (not counting the old days when I had four level 60/level 70 warriors - I'm sad to report I only have three 80 warriors now) of a different class. Gearing the DK's been interesting, and as I've run myself through various content my DPS has been steadily increasing, my understanding of my specs steadily expanding (frankly, I love Blood as a DPS spec, it has so many cooldowns for AoE damage and a nice bag of tricks without being as fiddly as Unholy, and I can't say enough good things about Frost as a tank spec) - I have to admit, I've totally turned around on DKs. They're awfully broken in my eyes (even after the most recent nerfs to their cooldowns and tanking health) but I cannot pretend to be having a bad time playing the class.

So now I turn to you. What class turned out to be a surprise hit with you once you tried it out?

It would be pretty fun to roll up a Priest of Janeiro and have some fun with a Ferengi-like religion of greed that believes that he with the most toys is blessed by Heaven and that not only can you take it with you, you'd better take it with you so that you can bribe your way into a better afterlife.

This week's routine server maintenance window for US realms has been announced in-game and on the forums. You know the drill! This happens every Tuesday, nothing to see here, certainly nothing to complain about.

Downtime is scheduled to start at 5:00AM PDT/8:00AM EDT and end at approximately 11:00AM PDT/2:00PM EST. This is, of course, assuming no extra maintenance time is tacked on due to issues.

Disclaimer: Patch 3.3 is not coming out today. But, you can certainly read up on the new additions to the game with Patch 3.2 in our Guide to Patch 3.2 if you need to kill some time whilst you wait for your server(s) to come back up.

BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza.These helpful hints are particularly suited for convention rookies. But if you are a con veteran, we'd love to hear your advice and wisdom in the comments as well.

Backpack, messenger bag, extra large purse -- whatever you are toting into the Anaheim Convention Center should be filled with a few basic things in order to get the most from BlizzCon. The catch is that it cannot be any bigger than 10"x20" and it cannot contain any of the following:

Blackrock Depths is the largest 5-man in the game, if not the largest instance, and it boasts over 40 bosses (that's mostly counting encounters, though -- you wouldn't count The Seven, for example, as seven different bosses), including lots and lots of optional bosses and even a holiday boss. Ulduar, by comparison, has about 14, and Karazhan is about that same size (though that depends on how you count random bosses, like the Opera Event). No matter how you slice it, 31 raid bosses is a ton of bosses to go through -- Icecrown could be a return to a really epic, large-scale instance.

Of course, there will likely be wings involved (Naxxramas' Quarters have worked out pretty well, I think), and with the new changes to raid lockouts, Blizzard no longer needs to squeeze the raiding experience into an average of two or three nights a week (which is what it seemed like they were usually aiming for before). If yours is the kind of guild that likes to clear everything in one night, though, you might want to start freeing up some time now.

Update: GC now says he didn't mean the instance would have 31 bosses, he was just throwing in some ridiculous number to prove a point. Our question: why did he say "yes, IC is that big" if he didn't mean it would be that big?

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.

Who doesn't love original artwork that expresses the essence of your character? We were captivated by the character sketch Elnore of Argent Dawn-US sent us to go with her recent profile in 15 Minutes of Fame. As it turns out, the guildmate behind the artwork has just begun to accumulate a small portfolio of simple sketches.

"I've been sketching since I can remember, really, but not seriously until I was a teenager," says Aigie. "I enjoy challenging myself with different perspectives and the process at which I got from point A to point B. This is why I use Artpad for most of my sketching. Sure, it's not the top of the line program and it's free -- but it has a replay button, and you can see the logical process in which my work evolves. (And did I mention it was free? Hehe.)"

They also look forward to BlizzCon: all of the developer panels and meetings that go on there, both from the perspective of fans (hey, we actually can be literate and reasonable instead of QQing all the time!) and from developers (turns out they are "not just blue text" -- who knew?!). It's not a super groundbreaking podcast, but as a wrapup to the release of 3.2 and a short preview to BlizzCon, it works just fine. And there's a bonus: Zarhym is offering up a contest -- answer some questions about the podcast after you listen to it, and you could win a "fabulous prize." The rules give away what the prize is: a Draenei vs. Blood Elf diorama or some action figures.

Of course we answered your emails as well -- we talked with Michael Sacco about the "Additional instances can't be launched" issue that's going around (that I got hit with for the first time yesterday, actually), and a reader emailed us about BRK's gun -- so awesome to see our friend get recognized, and deservedly so. It was an excellent show, in my humble opinion, and a great way to squeeze a week's worth of WoW news into just one hour.

This week, the podcast will be at a special time -- we'll be going live on Thursday at 1pm Eastern. That's a little earlier than we usually do it, but it should give our friends overseas a chance to tune in when they might not have been able to before (and if you can't make it live, don't worry, the recording will be in iTunes soon after). See you then!

Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. What exactly is Lightwell? How is it used? Why does no one use it?

Oh Lightwell. The things you could have been. Misunderstood by many and under-talented by a large number of Priests. Will you ever see raids?

Perhaps not. But we can try!

Lightwell

The first thing Lightwell novices need to understand is the purpose of the spell. It creates a Holy Lightwell wherever you want it that any player can interact with. A player who uses it gains a charge that heals them for more than 4500 health over a period of 6 seconds. It's got a 40 yard placement range. Be sure you pick up the Lightwell glyph for it. A 20% boost to Lightwell ticks go a long way and will help make this talent even more worthwhile.

There is a slight downside. If the player under the effect of a Lightwell charge takes a hit that's 30% of their total health, the effect disappears.

WoW.com has learned through multiple sources close to the situation some details on the next expansion, to be called World of Warcraft: Cataclysm.

As we're getting into the season of news and information, all major leaks and spoilers will be happening after the break. If you don't want your surprises ruined for you, don't read this post. If you want to know, click after the break and enjoy. This policy worked well for us during the testing phase of Wrath of the Lich King and we're pleased to continue it now.

Every raid leader has this moment. You're trying to get the raid ready for a boss attempt, but you just can't get people to focus. Someone's taking a quick bio. Two people are still arguing over the loot from three bosses ago. Another person is whispering you ill-conceived advice for changing your strategy. People seem to be more interested in listening to your healing lead talk in Vent about a movie she just saw than they are in buffing or putting on resist gear. Then someone that you can't replace DC's for the eighth time that night and you just snap.

You wonder if it's worth it. You wonder what it would be like to be a grunt rather than a general. Someone who just follows orders and doesn't have to worry about anyone but themselves. Sprinkle in some real-life stress in your life and retiring from raid leading suddenly seems very appealing. This week, one officer wonders how to give up his general's stripes without causing too much fuss.

'Lo there,

I've been a huge fan of your column for quite some time, and it's one of the few that I read immediately rather than saving for downtime during the game. I first got hooked during the 4-part casual raiding columns, which came at the time my guild was first venturing into Kara.

Anyway, I'm the executive officer in charge of raiding (supreme raid leader) for a successful casual/social guild on a server infamous for its lack of progression. It's a position that I've held since we started into Kara in Feb of '08, and since we first started raiding I've gained a couple of assistants that do an excellent job helping coordinate things.

The issue, in part, is that RL has started rearing its ugly head, and my work hours have been slowly increasing. [. . .]

You may recall Snoman as the chap who did WotLK White Dreamscape. Snoman didn't feel like other preview videos had done justice to the landscape in Wrath of the Lich King, so he created White Dreamscape to give it a much better showcase. Now, Snoman has just released the new video in his Dreamscape series, in which he takes the modelling of Azeroth, and creates something new and interesting.

This video was absolutely gorgeous. It's filled with brilliant and breathtaking views. The technical aspects of Snoman's work are leaps and bounds above much machinima, and every angle and scene shows off his incredible eye for detail. I'm usually hesitant to use words like "gorgeous," but I can think of few videos that deserve it as much as Shining Dreamscape.

Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.